Universalism and Particularism

Friends, it's really great to be with you. I'm somewhere else in another time zone at the moment, but I learnt to speak in my sleep, so... But you asked me to speak... You know, it is an interesting question. They asked me here, which comes first, is it Rabbi Lord Sacks or Lord Rabbi Sacks? And I gave them the answer that the Israeli novelist, Amos Oz, gave in a conversation we were having together before I was a lord, actually.

And he was contrasting the English value system with the Jewish value system. He said, ‘In English, you say King David. But in Jewish, you say David HaMelech.’ You see, in English, what counts is the title. First, it's a title. Then comes the person. But amongst yidden, first, you're David. Afterwards, you're HaMelech. And what really counts is who you are, not what title or office you hold. And that is a very important lesson that I hope all of you will take with you. 

Friends, you've asked me to speak about universalism and particularism, and what it is to live as a Jew in the wider world. And the short answer, I think, is very simple. And for me, it is most movingly exemplified in the story we'll read in a few weeks about Avraham and his nephew Lot, who, at a certain point, come to a sort of parting of the ways. And Lot decides to go to Sodom, and Avraham stays Avraham.

And we see in Bereishit 19, when the angels come to Lot, he's sitting in the gate of the city. And we see Lot, the first - to use the anachronistic phrase - the first assimilated Jew. He has decided to settle down in the cities of the plain. He is integrated. He's living among the non-Jewish populace. His daughters have married local men. They've married out. He is, we note, that when the angels come to visit Avraham, he's sitting at the entrance to his tent. But when they come to visit Lot, he's sitting in the gate of the city.

Who sat in the gate of the city in ancient times? The mayor. The mayor, yes. The judges, right? So Rashi says he'd just been appointed a judge. So he's a judge. His daughters have married local boys. He is part of them. He's the first assimilated Jew. 

Whereas Avraham lives a little bit apart, on his own. We see in Bereishit 14, in Parashat Lech Lecha, he is willing to go and fight for his neighbours when his nephew Lot is taken captive.

He summons a group and he fights a battle for them. We see in Bereishit 18, he is willing to pray for their behalf. You know, he will go to the nth degree to fight for the people of Sodom, to pray for the people of Sodom.

But he is true to himself. He keeps a measure of distance from them. That is integration without assimilation. He stays himself. 

Now what is the ultimate fate of the two of them? You remember Lot, who is settled down, he is a judge, but two strangers come and visit him. The whole town surrounds his house demanding that they bring him out.

When he offers them his two daughters instead to be raped, they try and attack him. It is only when the angels strike them with blindness that they are able to escape. When he is told by the angels you got to leave, the city has been destroyed and he tells his two sons-in-law they laugh at him.

And what I think is the first antisemitic sentence in history, the people of the town, when he says, you know, don't assault my visitors because they have taken shelter under my roof. The people of the town say, ‘Look at this outsider, this stranger who has come as a temporary resident. He is presuming to judge us?’

That is, I think, the first antisemitic remark in all of history. And only by shlapping him out do the angels actually save him because he is torn. “Vayitma’amei’a”- he delayed, and over the word “Vayitma’amei’a” is a very rare accent that only appears four times in the whole of Torah called the shalshelet, which goes up and down, up and down, in and out. He can't make his mind up. Am I a person of Sodom or am I a Jew? He is divided within himself. He can't make his mind up. “Vayitma’amei’a.” And that division within himself is almost fatal. He has no real acceptance in the world that he has assimilated into and he himself has lost the integrity of an identity. 

That is Lot who assimilated.

Avraham kept a distance. When Sarah dies and he has to do business with the people of the land, with the Hittites, what do they call him? Anyone remember? “Nasi Elokim ata betocheinu,” You are a prince of God in our midst.”

The Hittites were not Hebrews. They were not monotheists. But they recognised in Avraham a man, a holy man. “You are a prince of God in our midst.”

And that, for me, is the great paradox of Jewish life in the last 200 years. It's the Jews who seek social acceptance by trying to assimilate who fail to find that social acceptance. And it is the Jews that have the courage to be themselves about whom people are prepared to say “Nasi Elokim ata betocheinu,” You are a prince of God in our midst.

And I don't say that lightly. I say it from deep personal experience. Jews thought we can solve the problem of Judaism and antisemitism by disappearing, by being the same as everyone else, only more so.

You know, Shlomo Carlebach, of blessed memory, he spent a lifetime going around American campuses, preaching love to everyone, and at the end of a lifetime of engagement with students, he said “I ask students what they are, and if somebody gets up and says ‘I'm a Catholic,’ I know that's a Catholic. Says ‘I'm a Protestant,’ I know that's a Protestant. If somebody gets up and says ‘I'm just a human being,’ I know that's a Jew.”

Ribbono shel Olam! You know? You cannot be just a human in general without being something in particular. It's impossible. It's as difficult as trying to speak language in general without speaking one language in particular. You can't do it! 

And therefore, to my mind, Jews represent the ultimate exemplification of what it is to embody in ourselves both universalism and particularism at the same time. We are universalist because we believe the God of Israel is the God of all humanity. But we are particularists because we do not believe the religion of Israel is the religion of all humanity.

We believe that “chasidei umot haOlam, yesh lahem chelek l’olam haba,” we believe that good people of any nation, any culture, have a share in the World to Come. That should make us, in principle, more tolerant than either of the other Abrahamic monotheisms. In fact, I remember speaking at the one occasion in which I've spoken at the United Nations in late August 2000 they had a gathering of religious leaders from all over the world called the Millennium Peace Summit. You see how effective we were… 9/11, etc.

I learnt something else as well, which is religious leaders, whatever their faith, can give sermons but they surely to goodness can't take them and et cetera, et cetera. So, one way or another, somebody said to me, a Hindu guru, he said ‘Rabbi Sacks, I want you to be the keynote at our counter conference.’

I said, ‘What's your counter conference?’ He said, ‘The World Conference of Non-Evangelising Faiths.’ Are you with me? Indians really get upset because Christians want to make them Christian and Muslims want to make them Muslim and they just want to be themselves. And we as Jews say ‘Be yourself.’

We're not asking you to be like us. We believe in one God of all humanity, but we reach him our way and you reach him your way. 

So we are the only great faith that combines universalism and particularism in this curious way.

And that therefore leads to my formula. I actually set this out I think in “Dignity of Difference” and the students, the non-Jewish students of London University like this sentence so much. It was a surprise to me that if you go to London University Student Union - it's like the Hillel for everyone - in Gower Street, as you come in, there's a little plaque on the wall with this sentence. And they've actually put it as a plaque on the outside by the front door from Rabbi Sacks’ “Dignity of Difference.”

And it says this: “Because we are all different, we each have a contribution only we can make. So by being different, we give something unique to the universal heritage of humankind.”

And that is the Abraham way, not the Lot way. Be yourself but pray for your neighbours, fight for your neighbours, care about humankind. “HaShofet kol haAretz lo ya’aseh mishpat?“ And the truth is that that is something that I try and do and something that the Jews I really admire try to do.

So as much of my… in one sense in Britain for instance, when I broadcast, I broadcast to the nation, not to the Jewish community, who are only one half a percent of the population. But I think the non-Jews know me rather better than the Jews. They're certainly politer than the Jews. 

So for instance, if I can give you a tiny example, which I find very moving, because Britain is not like America, because we have a Queen and we have an established Church and we have an Archbishop of Canterbury. So there was an institution 20 years ago - it's an old institution - that every year on December 25th, at three in the afternoon, the Queen delivers a message to the nation. 10 minutes on face-to-camera auto cue on television. And in those days, on January 1st just after midnight, the Archbishop of Canterbury makes a message to the nation. So when I became Chief Rabbi in 1991, the BBC came to me and said would I like to give a message to the Nation? Go figure, we're half a percent of the population! Would I like to give a message to the Nation? 

Of course! Vy not? You know, so we began that way it was very nice, it was really nice. We each had 10 minutes and these were the three messages to the Nation. I can now tell you what the situation is now, 21 years later. The Queen gets eight minutes, the Archbishop of Canterbury gets five and I get 30. And that's very sweet of the BBC but it just tells you we didn't convert Britain to being Jewish - you know that kind of tzurus we don't need - but why? 

Because non-Jews like it when Jews give them a simple straight message. Aand when they know I'm not trying to convert them, I'm not there to give them a hard time. I'm there to say, ’Guys, this is how we see it. We've had a long history, we have long memories and this is how we see it. And if it makes sense to you, it's yours, and if it doesn't, nisht geferlach.

lt's a very easy message to deliver and people love to hear this. Many of my books were written for non-Jews as well as Jews and so on but that's personal stuff and I really don't want to discuss it.

But I think I would like just to share with you a story that came to the fore this summer that I found personally very moving. Unfortunately, I think in the States you missed this. You know, we had three big events in the summer in London: we had the Diamond Jubilee of the Queen and we had the Olympics, but the most moving of all - which you didn't see that much of in the States - was the Paralympics. You know what they are, the Olympics for the handicapped. 

And the BBC did an hour and a half film programme about… a dramatised telling of the life of the man who created the Paralympics and I don't know if you know this story, but I'm going to share it with you. Do you know this story? it's a wonderful film, I don't know if they put it out on American television, you must watch it, it's called “The Best of Men” and this is the story.

It concerns a doctor, Ludwig Guttman, German Jew from an Orthodox Jewish family, who by 1933 was Germany's leading brain surgeon. Hitler comes to power, the Nuremberg Laws are in force, every Jew is thrown out of every profession.

For five years, he continues to work in a Jewish hospital and then it's unsafe for him anymore and he comes to Britain in 1939. Recognising his genius as a neurosurgeon, the British government asked him, at the end of 1943, to create the first dedicated medical unit for people with severe spinal injuries for paraplegics at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Berkshire, just an hour's drive outside London, which he agrees to do.

What he finds when he comes to the hospital appals him.

The established understanding at the time was that paraplegics have no life expectancy. They will never walk again, therefore they will never lead a normal life, therefore the most humane thing to do is to keep them heavily sedated and let them die. The average life expectancy of a paraplegic when Guttman took over was between three and six months.

He comes to these paraplegics, he sees young people and he thinks to himself, ‘These are people that have a life ahead of them not just behind them.’ 

This is a Jew who knew “I testify before you, heaven and earth, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse, uVacharta baChaim, choose life.”

And he sets it as his goal to give these people back their lives, and it is hard going. The first thing he does is halve their painkillers, because it's the sedatives that are keeping them completely bedridden, and that hurts.

Then he gets them to sit up in bed, and that hurts.

And then he gets them to do exercises, and that hurts… and then he throws basketballs at them, and that hurts… and then he brings a physical instructor in from the army to throw the balls around the ward, and that hurts… and then he gets them out of bed into wheelchairs and then he gets the wheelchairs out of the ward into the garden and every step of the way they're crouching and it hurts.

And then he gets them to start playing games and he sees them playing games together - hockey, basketball, whatever gets them excited, it's giving them back their life, so he realises this is the revoir, this is the way to go.

So he gets the doctors and nurses into wheelchairs to play games with the paraplegics, and since the paraplegics are better in wheelchairs than the hospital staff, they start winning and once they start winning, they start living.

And he can see this is exciting, so he organises a national games for paraplegic and in 1948, four years after he began the unit, he organises the first parallel Olympics. 

A Shayne Yid, who knows from his experience in Nazi Germany what it feels like to be declared a non-person. So he sees these hospitalised people and they're regarded as non-persons and says, ‘No! These are human beings.’ “Uvacharta baChaim.”

And at every step of the way he is opposed because the nurses see he's giving the patients pain and they think he's a sadist. The doctors think he is raising hopes in people whose lives are really hopeless. 

And the BBC called the film that it made about his work “The Best of Men,” because his fellow doctors summon him to a tribunal and say, ‘What are you doing? What are you raising their hopes? They are cripples, they are hopeless, helpless cripples, what do you think they are?’ 

And Guttman looks at the other doctors and says, ‘Who do I think they are? The best of men.’

It is the most hopeful film I ever saw, all the more hopeful I mean just narrowly beating “The Shawshank Redemption.” But it's all the better because it wasn't written by Stephen King and it was really true.

And I suddenly realised how the BBC portrays this guy, you know as an ehrliche Yid. He comes home, says Shabbat Shalom to his wife and his kids, and I think to myself, that's it!

Hashem gave us a tough history. It isn't easy to be a Jew. History hasn't been a whole series of happy-ever-after fairy tales. But through that shaping experience of so much suffering and nonetheless saying “Uvacharta baChaim” and the high demands Hashem makes of us, He has given us certain values that we live, we exemplify. They are carved, ingrained, they are hardwired into our Jewish DNA.

And the world needs those values and it is by being what we uniquely are that we can give humanity what only we can give.

And therefore, don't tell me that universalism and particularism are conflicting values in Judaism. They are not. They're two sides of the same coin. We have to be universalist by being particularists.

Don't get up and say, ‘I'm just a human being,’ or get up and say, ‘I'm a Jew.’ Don't get up and say, ‘I'm a Jew,’ get up and live ‘I am a Jew.’

And after 21 years as Chief Rabbi, having spent a lot of time with non-Jews, other religious leaders, politicians, prime ministers, royal family, I have come to two conclusions, which I have found to be true of 99.5% of my experience and here they are:

Non-Jews respect Jews who respect Judaism. 

And non-Jews are embarrassed by Jews who are embarrassed by Judaism.

And therefore I say to you, walk tall as Jews. Never try and hide that fact. Never be afraid to be what you are, and never think yourself better than others, but never cease to realise that we have a special mission.

God did not call on us to be Jews for the sake of Jews alone, but for the sake of the world. And let us go out there proud that we are Jews, and so conduct our lives that we will bring pride to the Jewish people and nachat ruach to God.